Burt

As Burt’s CEO told us, “15 years of banner ads and we’re still clueless.” That about sums up the efficacy of the predominant revenue model of the Internet. So the company has come up with a product that will hopefully carry us further down the path to smarter ads. Rich, an ad campaign analytics tool targeted to creative agencies, is able to estimate the amount of attention consumers pay to an ad. Using predictive modeling and machine learning, Rich can answer previously nebulous questions about online ads, such as whether an ad was visible and if people noticed it. With in-depth reports and tracking features, we expect Rich to become a must-have product in every ad agency. Though advertisers continue to push for improved campaign measurement, there are no focused products created for this purpose in the $7.6 billion display ad market (IAB, 2009). This can be compared to the website analytics market, which Forrester estimates will reach nearly $1 billion by 2014.